Night before last an hour’s rain. Yesterday hot & overcast. Today ditto, with a few drops of rain in the afternoon. The hop-picking due to start in about a week.
Tags: hop-picking, weather
Night before last an hour’s rain. Yesterday hot & overcast. Today ditto, with a few drops of rain in the afternoon. The hop-picking due to start in about a week.
Tags: hop-picking, weather
August 28, 2008 at 11:00 am
For some reason, “ditto” has always been one of my favorite words.
August 28, 2008 at 12:16 pm
@ JamesonLewis3rd
Ditto.
August 28, 2008 at 2:05 pm
I didn’t realize that the word ‘ditto’ was so old, and that it has a Roman past.
http://www.answers.com/ditto&r=67
August 28, 2008 at 2:13 pm
I had no-idea “ditto” was that old a word. It makes me wonder as to the origins of the word.
A.
August 28, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Amir: Read up on the etymology of the word in a dictionary. It’ll give you a basic idea of how old the word is.
August 28, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Amir
Re Ditto
From Italian Detto [said] in the sense “already said” also latin Dictum
From Funk & Wagnall 1955 edition – a real dictionary in case some of you of you believe it never existed outside Rowan & Martin’s “Laugh in”
Brian B
August 28, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Hearing about rain makes me miss it. Seems like it just doesn’t rain like it used to, at least here in Kentucky..
August 28, 2008 at 3:41 pm
The word “ditto” (as it is used in this context, meaning “likewise”) is similar to the word “google” (as it is used in this context, meaning “search” [although I actually use Yahoo!]) in that it is a generic form of the brand.
August 28, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Orwell preferred not using the word “ditto,” but was obviously compelled to write it here due to the stifling heat. In addition, it is quite likely that he was off to pick hops himself and had little time left to write his entire thought.
August 28, 2008 at 6:15 pm
@ JamesLewis3rd:
The Ditto Machine (as referenced in your link) was named such for the reason that they were already aware of what ‘ditto’ meant and found it made sense to use it in the name for a copy machine. So only from that point did the word ‘ditto’ come to be a generic word for copying something, such as we reference most paper-tissues as Kleenex.
As far as I know, ‘google’ isn’t a word that the company derived from an already long established word, so this is an important distinction between ‘ditto’ and ‘google.’
August 28, 2008 at 7:29 pm
@Andrew – Quite the opposite here in England and the isles I understand. Wettest summer since records begin and even though everyone else is complaining I kind of like it and in the vein of this diary it is making everything green grow and look more lush than ever before. It’s quite nice to be able to stroll not too far and still be able to find tasty blackberries (competition is fierce as the blackbirds like them as well) although they’re not supposed to be eaten after tomorrow (Michaelmas) due to some superstition.
August 28, 2008 at 7:30 pm
Ignore me Michaelmas is a month away…
August 28, 2008 at 7:50 pm
I did not mean to suggest that “google” was a commercialized version of any word that had existed prior to 2001 nor was I suggesting that “ditto” was not a commercialized version of a word that already existed.
I apologize for the confusion.
August 28, 2008 at 8:15 pm
[...] George: It pleases me immensely that you were fond of using the shorthand term, “ditto.” The word has intriguing etymology and yet you didn’t sprout during the 1970s and 1980s, when “ditto” was more commonly used in reference to a mimeographed paper or a copy that was circulated amongst schoolkids and businessmen (who often behaved like schoolkids). But before good ol’ Xerox, it was used in a more common “see previous” capacity. You knew this of course. But let me confess my youthful ignorance. For years, George, I actually believed that the practice of saying “ditto” in this “see previous” capacity originated from the photocopy! I believed this as late as the early days of Limbaugh, circa 1993, when he referred to his listeners as “dittoheads.” (I am pretty confident, George, you wouldn’t have liked Limbaugh so much. For many years (1990-1993, to be precise), I exerted needless energies expressing my hostilities towards the man who gave us “feminazis” — an affront to the English language you likely would have observed. [...]
August 28, 2008 at 11:51 pm
“Ditto” was the last word spoken by my grandfather as he died at age 103 in 1971.
August 29, 2008 at 12:42 am
This is the first time I visit this weblog and I don’t think it will be the last.
August 29, 2008 at 5:48 pm
Aha, but Google *does* come from a pre-existing word: “googol”. Which proves … um, nothing much, I just thought it was interesting.
Nothing to do with Orwell either, but he’s being a bit bloody boring at the moment, isn’t he? Writing about the weather in your diary is one of the many dull things people did before TV …
August 29, 2008 at 6:43 pm
“This is the first time I visit this weblog and I don’t think it will be the last.”
I do hope you’ll post again next time you visit, so everyone can see that it’s not your last visit.